The assignee of the present invention manufactures and deploys spacecraft for, inter alia, communications and broadcast services. Market demands for such spacecraft have imposed increasingly stringent requirements on spacecraft payload capacity. To meet these demands, high power spacecraft with multiple large antenna reflectors are desirable.
Launch vehicle compatibility is a second requirement faced by a spacecraft designer. The increased performance requirements are only advantageously met if compatibility with conventional, commercially available launch vehicles is maintained. Accordingly, a spacecraft, as configured for launch, is desirably made compatible with fairing envelope constraints of such launch vehicles as, for example, Ariane V, Atlas XEPF, Proton, and Sea Launch. As a result, it is very often a requirement to reconfigure a spacecraft from a launch configuration to an on-orbit configuration by repositioning one or more deployable elements from a stowed (launch) position to a deployed (on-orbit) position. The deployable elements may include large antenna reflectors, photovoltaic panels, thermal radiating panels, imaging devices, or other components. Some techniques related to this requirement are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,789,796, 8,448,902, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/215,929, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
Improved techniques for reconfiguring a spacecraft from a launch configuration to an on-orbit configuration are desirable.